Disasters and emergencies that affect buildings may relate to sudden internal flooding or fire, severe weather events, industrial disasters, air crash, seismic events or infrastructure (electricity, natural gas or communications) failure. Over the last 100 years, each of these incidents has occurred in B.C., occasionally with a loss of life and serious injury but always with a significant loss to property and personal cost.
For anyone who has survived a building fire or major flooding, the benefits of having a reasonable disaster or emergency management plan are immediately obvious. However, simply executing a disaster management plan is insufficient unless a building also has a focused awareness program that is routinely delivered and updated to property residents/tenants and owners.
The loss of a power substation in Vancouver in the summer of 2008 illustrates how a local event can have a substantial impact on property use. An underground fire triggered a massive power outage in the city’s downtown core that spanned two days. Emergency generators kicked on in commercial and residential buildings and, for some, continued to operate through the duration of the outage until power was restored. However, one condo building’s emergency generator shutdown within 45 minutes as the fuel backup had not been restored in three years, and at least one other commercial building experienced generator shutdowns as a result of cooling failures connected to water pressure drops due to firefighting. The domino effect was a loss of critical power for high-tech service providers and building access. As well, building safety and security systems were compromised.
A disaster checklist is a critical planning and operations tool. It provides the user with a complete list of obligations, duties, time frames and directions in the event of a disaster. It also assists building owners, occupants, tenants, strata councils, strata managers, service providers and emergency responders, providing these groups with critical information about a building and how to address an immediate crisis.
Before creating a checklist, identify who will responsible for it. This person should then take inventory of the building’s occupants and property. In B.C., the Strata Property Act requires that condominium owners, occupants and tenants identify themselves to the strata corporation. This is essential in emergency planning for building evacuation.
Tony Gioventu is executive director of the Condominium Home Owners’ Association of B.C. He can be reached at tony@choa.bc.ca.
